ZOSTEEOPS. 141

nest, somewhat larger than the last described, the nest is made of
moss slightly tacked together with cobwebs and lined with fine
grass-fibres. Another nest, a very regular shallow cup, with an
egg-cavity 2 inches in diameter and an inch in depth, is composed
almost entirely of the soft silky down of the Galatropis yiyantea,
rather thickly lined with very fine hair-like grass, and very thinly-
coated exteriorly with a little of this same grass, moss, and thread.
Another, with a similar-sized cavity, but nearly three-fourths of an
inch thick everywhere, is externally a mass of moss, moss-roots,
and very fine lichen, and is lined entirely with very soft and bril-
liantly white satin-like vegetable down. Another, with about the
same-sized cavity, but the walls of which, are scarcely one-fourth
of an inch in thickness, is composed entirely of this satiny down,
thinly coated exteriorly and interiorly with excessively fine moss-
roots (roots so fine that most of them are much thinner than human
hair); a few black horsehairs, which look coarse and thick beside
the other materials of the nest, are twisted round and round in the
interior of the egg-cavity. Other nests might be made entirely of
tow, so far as their appearance goes; and in fact with a very large
series before me, no two seem to be constructed of the same
materials.

I have nests before me now, taken in September, March, June,
and August, all of which when found contained eggs.

Two is certainly the normal number of the eggs; about one
fifth of the nests I have seen contained three, and once only I
found four.

Prom Murree Colonel 0. JEL T. Marshall informs us that he took
the eggs in June at an elevation of about 6000 feet.

Colonel Gr. E. L. Marshall says :—" I have taken eggs of this
species at Cawnpore in the middle of June. I found six nests, five
of which were in neem-trees. I also found the nest in Naini Tal
at 7000 feet above the sea, with young in the middle of June ; one
only of all the nests I have seen was lined, and that was lined
with feathers : they were, as a rule, about eight feet from the
ground, but one was nearly forty feet up."

Capt. Hutton gives a very full account of the nidification of this
species. He says :—" These beautiful little birds are exceedingly
common at Mussoorie, at an elevation of about 5000 feet, during
summer, but I never saw them, much higher. They arrive from
the plains about the middle of April, on the 17th of which month
I saw a pair commence building in a thick bush of Hibiscus, and
on the 27th of the same month the nest contained three small
eggs hard-set. I subsequently took a second from a similar bush,
and several from the drooping branches of oak-trees, to the twigs
of which they were fastened. It is not placed on a branch, but is
suspended between two thin twigs, to which it is fastened by floss
silk torn from the cocoons of Bombyx Jmttoni, Westw., and by a
few slender fibres of the bark of trees or hair according to circum-
stances.

" So slight and so fragile is the little oval cup that it is aston-